


Bedtime Stories

by eigengrau



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Kink Meme, M/M, Polyamory, The Little Prince - Freeform, Threesome - F/M/M, gratuitous literary references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:20:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eigengrau/pseuds/eigengrau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Once when I was six I saw a magnificent picture in a book about the jungle, called True Stories. It showed a boa constrictor swallowing a wild beast. Here is a copy of the picture."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedtime Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Kink meme prompt: http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/1375.html?thread=445279#cmt445279  
> "Will watches and listens while Hannibal reads Abigail a bedtime story while she's curled up in the good doctor's lap."
> 
> The book Hannibal reads from is "The Little Prince," by Antoine De Saint-Exupery.

Will is fighting sleep himself when Abigail murmurs softly that she doesn't want to go to bed. They're sitting in the drawing room of Hannibal's house (possibly the only drawing room left in any house in the United States, in this day and age) after a supper of heavy cream of leek soup with thick chunks of bacon, meatballs spiced with cumin, and delicate slices of roast rubbed in sage and salt. The red wine that Hannibal had poured for the three of them has gone straight to Will's head, as it always has, and to Abigail's too. It can be easy to forget how young she is, sometimes. But curled up at Will's side on the long red sofa, head on his shoulder as he absently rests a hand on her thigh, he looks down and suddenly remembers. Her blue eyes are hazed with fear under lids threatening to droop, and Hannibal looks up from the paperwork that he's finishing at his desk. His face is shadowed from the table lamp, and his dark eyes seem to glow as if from within.

He stands, pulling a thin blue volume from one of his many bookshelves and coming to rest beside them on the couch. Abigail and Will's heads turn as one to look at him, and a small smile curves his lips. He pats his lap with one hand and Abigail scrambles over like a dog to curl herself on top of his legs, wrapping her arms loosely around his shoulders and letting her head drop against his chest. Will fights his own Pavlovian response to do the same. He also instantly misses her presence at his side and scoots closer so that he and Hannibal are brushing shoulders.

Hannibal presses a kiss to Will's forehead and then flips the book open with one hand, the other going up to stroke Abigail's hair.

"Once when I was six I saw a magnificent picture in a book about the jungle, called _True Stories_. It showed a boa constrictor swallowing a wild beast. Here is a copy of the picture."

Abigail stares at the page. Will peeks over her shoulder to see the illustration.

"In the book it said: 'Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing. Afterward they are no longer able to move, and sleep during the sixth months of their digestion.' In those days I thought a lot about jungle adventures, and eventually managed to make my first drawing, using a colored pencil. My drawing Number One looked like this."

There was another picture on the page; a rather lumpy, brown thing. Will raises an eyebrow.

"I showed the grown-ups my masterpiece," Hannibal continues reading, "and I asked them if my drawing scared them. They answered: 'Why be scared of a hat?'"

"It's obviously a boa constrictor digesting an elephant," Abigail mutters. Hannibal beams down at her with pride. Will blinks. He had been thinking the same thing.

Hannibal keeps reading and stroking Abigail, pausing every now and then to turn the page. Each time she whimpers softly in the back of her throat, trying to hide it. Finally, when Hannibal goes to flip the paper, Will reaches up and replaces the doctor's hand with his own, tangling his fingers in Abigail's silky brown hair. Hannibal shoots him a warm look and returns to the novel.

"On the fifth day, thanks again to the sheep, another secret of the little prince's life was revealed to me."

His voice, low and husky, seems to wrap around Will like a blanket. Like rich old wine it is warm on his tongue when he opens his mouth to breathe, filling the air of the room. He moves his hand lower on Abigail's back and cups her shoulder blades, digging his thumbs in to the flesh there. She is tight from stress and she groans and pushes back into his touch, shifting against Hannibal's front. Will moves down further and fits his palms to her hips, kneading there, then her thighs. She quivers under his touch and buries her face in Hannibal's shoulder.

He continues as if nothing had changed, as if the air wasn't sparking with electricity. "'If a sheep eats bushes, does it eat flowers, too?' 'A sheep eats whatever it finds.' 'Even flowers that have thorns?' 'Yes. Even flowers that have thorns.'"

Will slides a hand up under her skirt, suddenly, very much awake, the soft fabric rustling. Abigail gasps and shifts, legs spreading, twisting on Hannibal's lap. He keeps reading even as he helps her to move, turning her around so that Will can have easier access. As Will's fingers, calloused and rough, press at the thin white cotton of her underwear, Hannibal's free hand deftly unbuttons her shirt and cups the gentle swell of her left breast, thumb rubbing insistently through the fabric of her pale green bra. Abigail moans.

"'For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it's not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It's not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers?"

Will pushes her skirt up to her hips, pulls her underwear down her pale legs and kisses the inside of her thighs.

"If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself, 'My flower's up there somewhere...' But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important?'"

Abigail muffles her cries in the curve of Hannibal's neck as Will kisses between her legs, tongue flicking out to stroke her as lovingly as his hand had stroked her hair. Hannibal reads, and skims his long elegant fingers across the planes of her skin, across her chest, her stomach, her arms, her sides. She arches, caught between the two of them, body shivering as they help her to release.

The three, all with bloodstained hands, hold each other tightly. Will, hard in his trousers, kisses Abigail's shoulders and clutches as Hannibal's arm. Abigail sags, halfheartedly, sleepily, tugging her skirt down as her face flushes pink with tired, belated embarrassment. Hannibal smiles at the two of them, their eyes drifting closed.

"It's so mysterious, the land of tears," he reads, and then closes the book.

For now.

 


End file.
